1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to damping, particularly of individual track rollers of a crawler or tracked vehicle and proposes dividing long torsion bar springs, used thus far, into a plurality of small torsion bar springs to thereby reduce the installation space and to pass in particular the torsion bar springs of the front and rear track wheel not below the pan but to place them on the side along the pan.
2. Description of the Background Art
DE 41 23 778 C2, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 5,697,463, discloses efforts to dispose entire track components on a track carrier in the form of modules, which are connected together by tension and/or torque struts, which in turn are disposed below or above the bottom plate of the vehicle pan transverse to the longitudinal axis of the vehicle.
In a continuation of approaches of this type, it is proposed in EP 1 117 555 B2, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 6,527,072, that the entire drive unit is mounted in a corresponding side wall of the vehicle pan directly or via annular spacers, so that for the prior efforts an installation space is no longer needed below or above the bottom plate. The static components of the drive unit on their part are vibrationally uncoupled from the vehicle pan by vibration damping means. In practice this solution could not be accepted on a large scale.
Accordingly, parallel approaches are known from the state of the art to use hydraulic cylinders to transfer the damping in this way to the outside as well. Thus, DE 29 47 974 A1 discloses a stabilizing arrangement for a pan structure carried by a track drive of a tracked vehicle, whose hydraulic shock-absorbing means support the track rollers of the track drive.
A hydropneumatic element and the use in a vehicle with a drive and track rollers can also be derived from DE 103 28 541 A1, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Even when approaches are proposed, as to how to counteract the temperature development in such a cylinder, e.g., DE 10 2008 026 680 A1, which is incorporated herein by reference, or to provide movement-dependent damping, the temperature problem remains a functional problem.